Florida State has not run FBI background checks on Concealed Carry applicants for more than a year, because they forgot their login for the NICS background check system.
You could not make this stuff up…
Anti-Gun Crowd Wants Tougher Regs, But We Can Do These Ones…
In the wake of the Parklands shooting, we had to face the biggest wave yet of ‘won’t you think of the children’ hysteria and otherwise perfectly reasonable people are starting to talk about Civil War over the gun control issue. But here’s the thing, the rules we’ve got are pretty damned good when they are followed.
Basically Florida could have issued CCW licenses to felons and those with mental health issues, which is kind of scary. But the reason is really unforgivable. An employee simple forgot the password and didn’t want to admit his mistake.
Applications Basically Auto Approved
By the time the problem in the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Service was picked up by an outside audit by the Office of the Inspector General, it had passed almost 300,000 applications.
The employee in charge of the background checks could not log into the system, the investigator learned. The problem went unresolved until discovered by another worker in March 2017 — meaning that for more than a year applications got approved without the required background check. –Tampa Bay Times
Careless Application of Rules is a Problem
This could have been a disaster, but then the felons and mentally ill didn’t actually know that their applications would be ushered through without so much as a cursory glance at their FBI record. So,thankfully, not many applied.
So far, Florida State has revoked 271 of the CCW licenses and is checking in to 500 in total. If one of these nutbars had turned up at a school with two Glocks, it would still be the guns, not the person holding them or the system that put them in their hands.
Employee Told to Pound Sand
Florida State fired this particular employee, but this is an embarrassing kick in the nuts for the gun control crowd. The truth is we don’t need any more gun control. We just need to enforce the rules we do have and make sure that everybody who wants a gun is thoroughly vetted to see if they really should have one or not.
This isn’t rocket science, but then we face the gun control debate every day, while things like this just keep happening. The procedures we have work, but only if we use them.
